The Fine Art File

#( $ ""%%$) $* %+%$&&( . $. # ( ,*%""* %$($ '+ ( (*"/(%#*(* )* )-%(! )( )*( **"(%+$* %$ ( ,) In 1876 Jean-François Raffaëlli embarked upon a series of JEAN FRANÇOIS RAFFAELLI French 1850-1924 determinedly ‘realist’ paintings. These brought him to the Ferdinand du Puigaudeau was born in Nantes, then the main city particularly Guillaume Vogels, Jan Toorop and James Ensor. L’arrêt de l’omnibus, Paris attention of the Naturalist writers Zola, Huysmans and Duranty, of Britanny, and after travelling to Italy and Tunisia to hone his At about this time he also met the realistic painter and sculptor Signed Painted circa 1890 Oil on panel 12.25 x 18.25 in / 31 x 46 cm who in turn introduced him to the Impressionists who also met at Provenance: artistic skills he returned there. In 1886 he met the two most Constantin Meunier, and it is perhaps this artist’s work that Private collection, Aix-en-Provence; Private collection, Paris the Café Guerbois. He was taken under the wing of Edgar important artists to settle in the region, Paul Gauguin and Émile Puigaudeau’s most closely resembles. Degas, who invited Raffaëlli to participate in the Impressionist successful one-man show in 1884 proved a consolation. The Bernard, and continued working alongside them throughout the Nonetheless Britanny remained central to Puigaudeau’s career. exhibitions of 1880 and 1881, an action that bitterly divided the writer of ‘À rebours’, J K Huysmans, wrote of him as “un Millet dawn of the School of Pont-Aven which ‘arrived’ two years later. Apart from a productive stay in Venice in 1904, and living briefly group. Monet was worried Raffaëlli would dominate the 1880 Parisien”. Subsequently, the catalogue to the Metropolitan While the two masters continually pushed the boundaries, at Batz-sur-Mer, his native region provided most of his subject- exhibition with his outsized display of 37 works and in protest Museum New York notes of a Raffaëlli in its collection: “The eventually laying the foundation stones of modern art, matter. He painted scenes from the daily lives of the Breton chose not to exhibit. After the 1881 exhibition Monet returned sensitive handling in the finished pictures and their grayish Puigaudeau painted in a resolutely more traditional manner. In people, their festivals and ancient ceremonies, and the triumphs and Raffaëlli was the one to be excluded. Nonetheless, a hugely tonality brightened with touches of colour anticipate Utrillo.” 1889, during a trip to Belgium, he befriended the Group of XX, and tragedies of their hard day-to-day existence. Above: FERDINAND DU PUIGAUDEAU French 1864-1930 Fête à Pont-Aven Signed ALBERT LEBOURG Painted circa 1900 French 1849-1928 Oil on canvas La côte Sainte-Catherine 13 x 16.25 in / 33 x 41 cm à Rouen Signed Provenance: Painted in 1918 Kaplan Gallery, London Oil on canvas 19.75 x 29 in / 50 x 73.5 cm Provenance Left: Private Collection, France GASTON PRUNIER French 1863-1927 This work will be included Brouillard sur la Tamise in the forthcoming Albert Signed Lebourg Catalogue critique Painted in 1933 being prepared by Oil on canvas Rodolphe Walter of the 19.75 x 25.5 in / 50 x 65 cm Wildenstein Institute PABLO PICASSO Spanish 1881-1973 Le Peintre Signed Painted in 1967 Oil on canvas 36.25 x 28 in / 92 x 71 cm Provenance: Galeria Gaspar, Barcelona; Thence by descent to the present owners Literature: Christian Zervos, ‘Pablo Picasso: oeuvres de 1965 a 1967’, vol 25, Paris, 1972, no 358, illustrated; The Picasso Project, ‘Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings and Sculpture, The Sixties II, 1964-67’, San Francisco, 2002 PABLO PICASSO Spanish 1881-1973 Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe Signed & dated 1961 Pencil on paper 10.75 x 16.5 in / 27 x 42 cm Provenance: Galleria del Millione, Milan; Acquired from the above in 1963 Literature: Christian Zervos, ‘Pablo Picasso: oeuvres de 1961 a 1962’, vol. 20, Paris, 1968, no. 77, illustrated Pablo Picasso was unarguably the most important artist of the Over the course of a few years (1959-1962) Picasso was 20th Century. He redefined painting in a manner unlike any other besotted by the theme of ‘Déjeuner sur l’herbe’, as he had been artist and his career ploughed its own path through the many with Velasquez’s ‘Las Meninas’ too. The 1863 painting by Manet Perhaps more than any other artist, Picasso’s late oeuvre is held and high purple collar. Above all it is the inventive composition different movements that appeared throughout his long career. was to be hugely influential to a number of 20th Century artists in high esteem by critics and collectors. As with all walks of life that is staggering: the profile is made up of a single brushstroke Picasso’s artistic journey is legendary and stretched from his since it played with the ideas of societal hierarchy, sexuality and the 1960s was a decade of transformation, when popular artists that sweeps down the centre of the canvas creating a balance to childhood as the son of a mediocre artist in a small village near the anti-establishment sentiment of the time. Yet for Picasso the looked to a new future: visual art was now a mixture of the thick swirls of hair to the right of the pose. Each part of the Barcelona to the vast wealth of the 1960s in the Cap d’Antibes choice of ‘Déjeuner’ to reinterpret was a challenge of performance, design, fashion and (importantly) hype. Yet painting is innovative though carefully structured to create a on the French Riviera. composition more than a ‘right-on’ social agenda. In this study, amongst this maelstrom of artistic invention Picasso looked to painting which, as with everything involving this artist, could The artistic, philosophical and cultural changes that took place in not seen on the market since 1963, Picasso shows the group in the history of art and notably to the glorious age of 17th Century never be plain. the first half of the 20th Century were vital to Picasso flourishing. a flat line drawing without any shading or nuanced modelling of Spain and Holland. Picasso wanted his legacy to run in the same Perhaps the best person to judge his late work, his biographer Perhaps in any other generation his views and methods would form. The composition is an interplay of several Picasso tricks, vein as that of Rembrandt and his hero Velasquez. John Richardson, summed up his late period perfectly: “a have been too coarse, too different and too shocking to be taken such as the depiction of the subject on the right of the work – Never seen on the market since it was painted in 1967, ‘Le phenomenal finale to a phenomenal oeuvre”. A similar oil to ‘Le seriously. Paris in 1900 was a place and time when all artists otherwise faceless except the dark pencil that leaves a clear Peintre’ is a tour de force of Picasso’s late work. Here the artist is Peintre’ which shares the same title was sold in 2007 for $3.5m chose to revolt against the Classical and without Picasso the profile. This piece is amongst the rarest seen on the market since asking the audience to consider his oeuvre as a worthy extension and another sold at Christie’s this February for £3.5m. The upheaval would not have had its hero. It needed his overbearing it is a fully finished work, unfettered by indecision and re-working to the vast legacy of the old masters. We see the artist in a semi- highest price paid at auction for a work from this series was the ego to captain the revolution. of composition. abstract pose with a 17th century costume, coiffeur, moustache $6.5m paid for another 1967 canvas in 2007. HANS RICHTER German 1888-1976 Zeppelin Signed Painted in 1916 Oil on board 23 x 20 in / 58.5 x 51 cm Provenance: The Hans Richter Estate The great deflater of German greatness, George Grosz wrote: In the introduction to his book ‘Über Alles die Liebe’ (Love Above “My drawings expressed my despair, hate and disillusionment.” All), published in Berlin in 1930, Grosz refers to the characters in In the work above, Grosz depicts a smartly dressed but vacuous the book who are obviously very similar to those depicted in this couple walking down the street. The woman sports a large pink watercolour: hat and a diminutive dog wearing an over-sized blue bow; the “The title shows that the subject here is interpersonal relations. fleshy-faced man is carried by stick-thin legs. To the right is a Fine, but one should not expect that my drawings would sharply-dressed man wearing a smug, self-satisfied grin. The resemble illustrations of usual lovers’ idyll. Realist that I am, I sum Hans Richter is famous today as one of the hugely influential the Cubo-Futurists proved a strong influence, while Richter’s artist first titled the watercolor ‘Jugendzeit’, or youth, a cynical my pen and brush primarily for taking down what I see and Dada Group, and as an avant-garde film-maker who claimed ‘Violoncello’ of 1914 and his ‘Orchestra’ of the following year title as the figures’ youthful days have obviously long passed. observe, and that is generally unromantic, sober, and not very (erroneously) to have made the first ever abstract film. ‘Zeppelin’, have all the hallmarks of the dynamic Futurism typical of In 1931, Grosz retitled the work ‘Quallen’, or jellyfish, to dreamy…hurrah for progress, human relations in general and above, is one of the very finest of his early pre-Dada works and compositions by Francis Picabia in 1912-1913. emphasize the unfocused insipidness of the figures.

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